By Carlos Pallordet

LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - The North American insurance composite compiled by investment banks Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co underperformed all broad market indices last week, although it continued to lead for the year to date.

The S&P 500 index rose 1.5% in the week, surpassing the 6,000-point mark for the first time since February.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 closed the week up 2.0%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.2%.

Meanwhile, the small-cap Russell 2000 index surged 3.2% for the week, although it remains 3.6% down for the year-to-date.

“Interest rates began the week up sharply, on concerns about the House’s approved budget plan and the large increase in deficits that would follow from extending the current tax rates,” Stonybrook-Weild said.

“Markets shook it off by mid-week when the Department of Labor reported a declining, although better-than-feared, job report, and the European Central Bank eased its rate by 25 basis points,” they added.

The investment banks suggested the fall in Treasury yields seemed to indicate a higher likelihood of interest rate cuts as early as September, which drove the surge in the stock market.

In the North American insurance composite, advancers led decliners by only 59 to 50. Seven of the 12 groups advanced.

The two best-performing groups were insurance service providers, up 6.0%, and life, annuity and accident insurers, up 1.3%.

The two worst-performing groups were global brokers, down 2.4%, and global P&C, down 1.8%.

Among the former, Arthur J Gallagher saw the biggest fall, retreating 5.4% for the week.

This was followed by WTW, with shares down 2.3% in the week to Friday.

Marsh McLennan and Aon were down 1.6% and 0.3% respectively.

Among the group of global P&C carriers, the biggest fall was recorded by Berkshire Hathaway, with shares down 2.2%.

Meanwhile, Chubb lost 1.1%, but and shares in AIG rose by 3.2%.

The group of personal lines insurers also had a relatively weak performance, with shares down 1.1% on average.

Kingstone Companies saw the largest fall, down 6.6% for the week.

Progressive, the largest company in the cohort by market capitalisation, retreated 2.0%.

Meanwhile, Allstate, the second-largest company in the group, shed 0.9%.

As noted by Stonybrook-Weild, it was particularly strong week for tech-focused shares, with Lemonade and Root up 19.0% and 15.8% respectively. Meanwhile, Porch Group and Hippo rose 19.1% and 17.7% respectively.

Meanwhile, the group of reinsurers saw their shares remain flat on average by the end of the week.

Everest Group and Renaissance Re, the largest and third-largest companies in the cohort, lost 0.3% and 1.0 respectively.

SiriusPoint was down 1.1% while Greenlight Capital Re slid 0.3%.

In contrast, Reinsurance Group of America rose 1.4%

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 9.7% on a year-to-date basis.

In this article, we have included a selection of industry comp tables published in full by Stonybrook and Weild & Co in their weekly update.